Movies

Hey “Star Wars” fans: May the Fourth be with you!
Playing on “May the Force be with you,” a phrase first spoken in “Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope,” the biggest holiday of the year for franchise fans means lots of cool “Star Wars”-themed things...

It’s the most wonderful time of the year again. The fifteenth annual Independent Film Festival Boston begins on Wednesday night, kicking off Holy Week for the city’s cinephiles.
Unspooling at the Somerville, Brattle and Coolidge Corner Theatres, the non-profit IFFBoston and its all-...

Sadly, Ken Marino isn’t in “How to Be a Latin Lover.” But he did direct it. The prolific comic actor — an alum of “The State,” “Party Down” and his own sexy fireman show “Burning Love” — stays behind the camera on the new comedy...

Film festivals aren’t only about films these days. In its 16th year, the Tribeca Film Festival has shaved down the number of movies it runs. It’s only a nub — a mere 20 percent. That leaves room for plenty of other reasons to get people out: TV premieres, talks with filmmakers and...

Hoo-ah. As the then-owner of New York’s Plaza Hotel, President Donald Trump demanded a scene when “Scent of a Woman” filmed at the posh hotel, the film’s actor Chris O’Donnell revealed during Wednesday's episode of "Conan."
“We got new pages while...

James Gray is a funny guy. He doesn’t make very funny films. “We Own the Night,” “The Immigrant,” the new “The Lost City of Z” — all are heavy, serious, deeply moving dramas, old-fashioned in some ways. (“Two Lovers,” with Joaquin...

Few involved in the new renovation of the Quad movie theater have particularly fond memories of it, at least in its last couple decades.
“I didn’t think the programming was the greatest, and I didn’t think the environment was the right environment,” admits Charles S. Cohen...

Remember “The Fast and the Furious”? We mean the original. It was 2001, and the summer movie season was gifted with a simple entertainment in which two up-and-comers — one Vin Diesel and one Paul Walker — played ripped dudes who drive cars real fast. It wasn’t “...

“That gum you like is going to come back in style,” announced a dancing, backwards-talking dwarf some 27 years ago on a surreal nighttime network soap opera that somehow managed to pull Super Bowl ratings. David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” captured the country’s...

The film of “Fifty Shades” is surprisingly skimpy on salaciousness, not even coming close to older transgressive movie bechmarks. These far naughtier films are all presently streaming:
‘Basic Instinct’ (Netflix Instant)
This Paul Verhoen-Joe Eszterhas neo-noir seemed to...

We’re standing in an empty reservoir in the Potts Hill section of Sydney, Australia. Before us lies a sea of charred humans, frozen in anguished poses a la the victims of Pompeii. Later we’re inside a giant warehouse, gawking in majesty at the so-called “hall of heads”...

Are you suffering from superhero movie fatigue? Judging from the box office numbers, most of you probably aren’t. But we are. We contracted this illness back in 2013, when “Thor: The Dark World” offered a lot of forgettable, clangy nonsense, and made it official that each entry in...

Donald Trump is still our president, and “The Boss Baby” is still our number one movie. While voice star Alec Baldwin was pulling double duty on “SNL” this weekend as both America’s own boss baby and skeezy alleged sexual harasser Bill O’Reilly, his big cartoon...

So, the world just got worse! As you heard last night, the Trump administration has fired missiles at Syria. If we had a different, thoughtful, sane president, that could be a noble act intended to save a beleaguered people. But when the Commander in Chief is the guy who possibly thought Frederick...

Walter Hill knows “The Assignment” is controversial. Since premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall — hell, even while it was being shot — the latest from the legendary filmmaker (“The Warriors,” “48 Hrs.,” also "...

What if all movies were superhero movies? It might happen one day. Along with animated kiddie films, they’re the only genre that reliably overpowers the box office these days. (Unless they’re the instantly forgotten super-catastrophe that was “Fantastic Four.”) Luckily, we...

Though best known for early-career body horror extravaganzas like “Dead Ringers” and “The Fly” or his late period adaptations of unadaptable books (“Naked Lunch,” “Crash” and “Cosmopolis”), there was a brief spell back in the mid-2000s...

Some of us remember where we were when we heard Heath Ledger died. The news came out of nowhere, and it was a sock to the gut that someone this young and this talented had abruptly vanished from this mortal coil. We admit to not being blown away by him at first; in “10 Things I Hate About You...

Less than a week after Donald Trump’s inauguration, “1984” sold out on Amazon. It was a little late; it would have been nice had people read George Orwell's dystopian classic before November. Still, things have chilled out a little since then, even as giant chunks of...